through the skylight, apparently addressing a delinquent midshipman.
“A fine young flibberty-gibbet
Hornblower took the coffee Brown brought in.
“My compliments to Mr. Hurst,” he croaked, “and ask him kindly not to make so much noise over my skylight.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
The first satisfaction that day was to hear Hurst cut his tirade abruptly short. Hornblower sipped at the scalding coffee with some degree of pleasure. It was not surprising that Hurst should be in a bad temper to-day. He had been through a harassing evening the night before; Hornblower remembered Hurst and Mound carrying Braun, unconscious and reeking with spirits, into the carriage at the palace door. Hurst had been strictly sober, but apparently the mental strain of keeping guard over a secret assassin in the Tsar’s palace had been too much for his nerves. Hornblower handed his cup back to Brown to be refilled when Brown reappeared, and pulled his nightshirt over his head as he waited. Something caught his eye as he laid his nightshirt on his cot; it was a flea, leaping high out of the sleeve. In a wave of disgust he looked down at himself; his smooth round belly was pockmarked with flea-bites. That was a striking commentary on the difference between an Imperial palace and one of His Britannic Majesty’s ships of the line. When Brown returned with his second cup of coffee Hornblower was still cursing fiercely both at Imperial uncleanness and at the dreary prospect of the nuisance of having to rid himself of vermin to which he was peculiarly susceptible.
“Take that grin off your face,” snapped Hornblower, “or I’ll send you to the grating to see if you grin there!”
Brown was not grinning; all that could be said about his expression was that he was too obviously not grinning. What irritated Hornblower was the knowledge that Brown was enjoying the superior and paternal state of mind of one who has not a headache while the man who is with him has.
His shower-bath restored some of Hornblower’s peace of mind, and he put on clean linen, gave Brown orders for the disinfection of his clothes, and went up on deck, where the first person on whom he laid eyes was Wychwood, bleary-eyed and obviously with a far worse headache than he had himself. Yet the keen air of the Russian morning was invigorating and refreshing. The normal early-morning ship’s routine, the sight of the rows of men holystoning the decks, the pleasant swish of the water over the planking, were comforting and restorative as well.
“Boat coming off to us, sir,” reported a midshipman to the officer of the watch.
It was the same pinnace as had taken them ashore yesterday, and it brought a naval officer with a letter in French—
His Excellency the Minister of the Imperial Marine presents his compliments to Commodore Sir Hornblower. His Excellency has given orders for a water-boat to be alongside the
A distinguished nobleman, M. le Comte du Nord, having expressed a desire to see one of His Britannic Majesty’s Ships, His Excellency proposes to trespass upon Sir Hornblower’s hospitality by visiting the
Hornblower showed the letter to Wychwood, who confirmed his suspicions.
“That’s Alexander,” he said. “He used the title of Comte du Nord when he was travelling on the continent as Tsarevitch, He’ll be corning incognito, so that there’ll be no need for royal honours.”
“Yes,” said Hornblower dryly, a little nettled at this soldier giving him advice beyond what he was asked for. “But an Imperial Minister of Marine must rank with a First Lord of the Admiralty. That’ll mean nineteen guns and all the other honours. Midshipman of the watch! My compliments to the captain, and I shall be very obliged if he will be good enough to come on deck.”
Bush heard the news with a low whistle, and instantly turned to sweep decks and rigging with his glance, anxious that his ship should be in the perfection of condition for this Imperial visit.
“How can we take in water,” asked Bush piteously, “and be in a fit state for the Tsar to come on board, sir? What will he think of us? Unless we water the flotilla first.”
“The Tsar’s a man of sense,” said Hornblower, briskly. “Let’s show him the hands at work. He doesn’t know the difference between the mizzen-stay and the flying jib-boom, but he’ll recognize efficient work if we show it to him. Start watering while he’s on board.”
“And the food?” asked Bush. “We’ll have to offer him something, sir.”
Hornblower grinned at his anxiety.
“Yes, we’ll offer him something.”
It was typical of Hornblower’s contrary temperament that the more difficulties other people foresaw the more cheerful he became; the only person really capable of depressing Hornblower was Hornblower himself. His headache had left him completely, and he was positively smiling now at the thought of a busy morning. He ate his breakfast with appetite, and put on his full-dress uniform once more and came on deck to find Bush still fussing round the ship, with the crew all in clean white frocks and duck trousers, the accommodation ladder rigged, with hand-ropes as white as snow, the marines pipeclayed and polished, the hammocks stowed in mathematical tiers. It was only when the midshipman of the watch reported a cutter approaching that he felt a little twinge of nervousness, a sudden catch in his breath, at the thought that the next few hours might have a decided bearing on the history of the world for years to come.
The calls of the boatswain’s mates shrilled through the ship, and the ship’s company fell in by divisions, officers to the front with epaulettes and swords, and Hornblower at the quarterdeck rail looked down at the assembly. British seamen on parade could not possibly rival the Prussian Guard in exactitude and uniformity, and to drill them into any approach to it would be likely to expel from them the very qualities that made them the valuable men they were; but any thinking man, looking down the lines of intelligent, self-reliant faces, could not fail to be impressed.
“Man the yards!” ordered Bush.
Another squeal from the pipes, and the topmen poured the rigging in an orderly upward torrent, without a break in their speed as they hung back-downward from the futtock-shrouds, going hand-over-hand up the topgallant-shrouds like the trained gymnasts they were, running out along the yards like tight-rope walkers, each man taking up his position on the foot-ropes the moment he reached it.
Various emotions warred in Hornblower’s breast as he watched. There was a momentary feeling of resentment that these men of his, the cream of the service, should be put through their paces like performing bears to gratify an Oriental monarch. Yet as the evolution was completed, when each man reached his place, as though by some magic a gust of wind had whirled a heap of dead leaves into the air and left them suspended in a pattern of exquisite symmetry, his resentment was swamped by artistic satisfaction. He hoped that Alexander, looking on, would have the sense to realize that these men could be relied upon to perform the same feat in any conditions, in a black night with a howling gale blowing, on a raging sea with the bowsprit stabbing at the invisible sky and the yard-arms dipping towards the invisible sea.
The boatswain, looking with one eye over the starboard rail, gave an infinitesimal jerk of his head. A little procession of officers was coming up the accommodation ladder. The boatswain’s mates put their calls to their lips. The sergeant-drummer of marines contrived to snap his fingers beside the seams of his trousers as he stood at attention, and the six side-drums roared out in a bold ruffle.
“Present arms!” bellowed Captain Norman, and the fifty muskets with fixed bayonets of the marines left the fifty scarlet shoulders and came down vertically in front of fifty rows of gleaming buttons, while the swords of the three marine officers swept in the graceful arc of the military salute.
Alexander, followed by two aides-de-camp, came slowly on board side by side with the Minister of Marine to whom nominally all this ceremony was dedicated. He put his hand to his hat-brim while the pipes died away in a
